This ballpoint is a Net client

The thinnest Internet appliance yet, a ballpoint pen from Anoto AB of Lund, Sweden, incorporates an image processor, a video camera and a Bluetooth wireless transmitter.

Removing the pen cap turns everything on. Writing or drawing on a proprietary dotted grid, printed on paper or other surfaces at 1,000-dot-per-inch resolution, captures digital snapshots of the pen's movement every hundredth of a second at 0.03-millimeter resolution.

The video camera recognizes only the pen's special black ink.

Anoto has set a release date of mid-2001 for the $100 pen. More information appears on the Web at www.anoto.com.